My journey back from autoimmune disease

More health history- Pregnancy #2

by cebrought on May 14, 2012

So I left off on the health history with my second pregnancy. After nearly 4 years of trying, we did conceive in Nov. 2006. Of course we were ecstatic! It had been a really rough road to get to that point. Lots of tears, lots of prayers, and lots of disappointment. My first trimester was tough. I was really nauseated for the first 13-15 weeks. No vomiting, but just constant nausea. At around 6-7 weeks I developed an arrhythmia. My heart would feel like it was beating out of my chest. Because it was beating so hard and I could always hear it, I also sensed that it was beating out of time. Sometimes it would skip a beat, other times it just didn’t seem to be keeping a regular rhythm. My o.b. agreed that there was an issue and sent me to see a cardiologist who specialized in pregnancy. He diagnosed me with a heart murmur and also an arrhythmia due to the stress of pregnancy. I wore a heart monitor for about 6 weeks and he kept close tabs on me, but assured me it would get better after my first trimester. It did. While I was thankful that I didn’t need medication and the situation was resolving, I also wondered what it was that was causing this. The female body was meant to cope with the stress of pregnancy and if my body wasn’t dealing adequately then something somewhere in my body must have been out of balance. After about 4 months, these issues were mostly resolved and I went on to have a pretty normal pregnancy for the next 5 months. My daughter was born via c-section in Aug. 2007. She was perfectly healthy and the surgery went well. I recovered easily, but I believe now that the surgery was just one more trauma that was damaging the cells in my body.